Abstract

William B. Coley, MD, a surgeon of the early 20th century, noted the regression of a soft-tissue sarcoma in the neck of a patient after a life-threatening bacterial infection. He subsequently developed Coley toxins (sterilized cultures of various gram-negative bacilli), which he administered to patients with solid tumors to reproduce the antitumor effect he had observed with severe bacterial infections. The search for a pathophysiologic explanation of this phenomenon led Carswell and colleagues (1) in 1974 to describe tumor necrosis factor. This endotoxin-induced serum factor caused necrosis within 24 hours of subcutaneously transplanted methylcholanthrene A-induced sarcoma in BCG-primed mice. The